That is a stunning rebuke for the political class: the Labour Government, elected just last year on a mandate of “change”, is clearly not seen to be doing what it said on the tin. But the Conservatives are no more popular, after 14 years in office which ended in utter chaos.
Perhaps the answer is the poor calibre of today’s politicians? But Sunak is undeniably smart and ferociously hard-working, while Starmer has an impressive track record as a top barrister and public servant. His landslide election win suggests he has political chops too.
It’s no surprise that people are angry. Taxes are at a post-war high even as public services struggle to deliver. Immigration is through the roof, though our migration system seems cruel and unaffordable to many of those hoping to move here.
“There is definitely an anti-politics vote,” one senior Conservative MP told me recently. “There are a lot of pissed-off people.” Most Tories would accept they must take at least part of the blame, given their own track record.
Told that voters are complaining about policies such as cuts to the winter fuel allowance and the national insurance hike, which are funding higher budgets for the NHS and schools, one Government aide explodes: “The bits they don’t like are the things we had to do, to do the things that they do like!”
“It would be helpful, come next year, if the Chancellor is able to start saying, ‘Because of a Labour Government, you are feeling better off,'” one up-and-coming backbencher tells me.
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There’s the rub. Reform UK’s rise in the opinion polls – a number of surveys find the party on 30 per cent or more – is not due to the country becoming vastly more right-wing, or deciding en masse that Nigel Farage was right all along about Brexit.
What unites them is not any particular policy programme, but an overwhelming feeling that the status quo is not working for them. To hold off the Reform surge, Labour and the Tories need to prove that they have concrete ideas to improve the everyday lives of ordinary people – and a way to implement them.
Because we can’t go on like this. If Starmer and Kemi Badenoch think business-as-usual is anywhere near enough, the big winner will be Farage.
Hugo Gye is political editor at The i Paper
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